Information and help on glass fusing, stained glass, kiln forming, acid etching, sandblasting and other areas of working with glass.

Wednesday, 2 November 2016

Filling Gaps in Fused Pieces

Often your cutting is not as accurate as you would like so
there are small gaps between the pieces as you assemble the piece.

Tammyhudgeon.com

One solution that is often used is to grind the edge of the
too large piece to get the fit desired.
The problem with this is that thorough cleaning is required to avoid
devitrification lines appearing on the final piece. Also, even with extensive grinding, the fit
is not perfect.

The alternative is to fill the gaps with fine frit or
powder.

artistryinglass.com

Assemble the whole piece and assess the gaps. If they are very large, you need to adjust
the glass. If they are only millimetres wide, powder and frit can fill the gap
to disguise the join. I generally use
powder for almost perfect joints, and fine frit for anything larger.

I first cover the gap with powder or frit and with a soft
brush work at right angles to the line of the join. This ensures that I have filled the gap to
the height of the glass. However, the
frit and powder have air spaces, and so will fuse to a lower level than the
height of the glass. So, once gap is
filled, I build a small ridge over the gap trying not to extend beyond the
gap. This mound compensates for the lack
of density of the frits.

The frit and powder colour must match the glass exactly to become
invisible. It can be made from your scraps
or purchased at the same time as the glass. I find it more successful to do
these fills with the darker glass. It
provides a more distinct edge to the joint.
It also conceals the base glass better.

It can also be used to conceal the joint in a single colour where the piece cannot be cut as one and needs several pieces to make the whole. This is more simple as any overspill will not be noticed when fused.

This method only works with full fusings. At tack fuse temperatures the frit will not
fully combine with the sheet glass to form a smooth invisible join surface.

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